How to Run a Pinterest Pin Ad Campaign - A Beginners Guide

Oct 18

You know Pinterest Marketing is amazing for driving traffic to your business but sometimes you want a little extra help spreading the word. In this blog, I will share tips for creating your first Pinterest Promoted Pins Ad Campaign. As a user of Pinterest Marketing for your business, your goal is to drive traffic to your business. You want searchers to see your pins, click and leave Pinterest to head to your business’ website or shop. Promoted Pins can help you increase this traffic!

Promoted Pins, when created correctly, will help your pins show up more often in front of your targeted audience. Since Pinterest is a slow burn, you may sometimes want results faster. If you don’t want or have the time to wait for your pin to make its way around Pinterest, it could be time to consider a Promoted Pin Ad Campaign.

Before we get into the details of Promoted Pins, there are a few key things that you need to do. Without these steps, you will not be able to set up a successful ad campaign.

Step One - Pinterest Basics

Pinterest Business Account - This one may seem obvious but…make sure you have a Pinterest Business Account. You won’t be able to run Pinterest Ads without one. You can either create a new business account or convert your existing personal account.

Install The Pinterest Tag - Install the Pinterest Tag on your website. Pinterest provides detailed instructions on how to install the Tag in their help section. Having the Tag even before you run ads will help Pinterest understand your traffic, who your customer is and who will be your target audience. After you run your ads, the Tag will allow you to see your results.
Keywords - You must use good keywords on your Pins and in your content so that when you target an audience, you have used the keywords that they will use. By doing careful keyword research, you are helping Pinterest help you find your idea customers.
Pins - You must create great eye catching and clickable Pins. Pin Design is critical. Without great Pins to start with, your Promoted Pin Campaigns will fall flat. So, be sure your images, text overlay, call to action, title and description are all carefully thought out with your ideal customer in mind.
Organic Traffic - When picking pins to promote, you want to pick pins that already get good organic traffic on their own. These will be the pins with the good keyword research and Pin design!

You must have all of these parts of the puzzle to run a successful Promoted Pin Campaign. Remember to check out what is working organically and what keywords and pin images are working well for you!

Step Two - Understand Your Pinterest Goals

When deciding to run your Pinterest Promoted Pins Campaign, it is important to review your goals. A few things to consider when deciding on your goal:

Brand Awareness - In running a Promoted Pins Campaign perhaps you are hoping that people will begin to know your name. Pinterest Promoted Pins can help share your business with a larger audience. Your business will get views from searchers looking for what you are offering. These new viewers will have the opportunity to click on your pin, head to your site and get to know you better. Remember, Pinterest viewers are often cold, they don’t know you. So a Promoted Pins campaign can help spread your brand awareness, allowing people to get to now who you are and what your business has to offer them as they look for solutions to their problems.
Generate Leads - Pinterest Promoted Pins are also a great way to send people to a landing page on your website if you are selling something or offering a freebie/opt-in. If you want to spread the word about a new service or if you are building your email list with a freebie, a Promoted Pin Campaign can help drive Pinterest searchers to your landing page.
Sales - If you are are targeting an audience who knows you and are ready to buy, you can also run a Promoted Pins Campaign directed at them. Send these customers to your website to make their purchase.

Step Three - Understand Your Sales Funnel

As you plan your Promoted Pin Campaign you must decide where your target customer is in your sales funnel. It is important that you decide who that person is so that you can plan a campaign that is attractive to them. For example, you don’t want to design a campaign for a new offer you are selling and then target customers who are in the top of your funnel (or don’t really know you yet).

The parts of the Sales Funnel:

Top - People at the top of your Sales Funnel are just checking things out. They are looking for information. At the top of the funnel, your goal is to get them into your world. They are just learning, an example of an offer at this point of your funnel is a blog post providing information they are searching for. This part of your audience is cold.
Middle - People in the middle of your Sales Funnel are ready to check something more out, if you are targeting people here, maybe you offer a them a freebie or opt in in exchange for their email address. At this point of the funnel, you are giving them a specific solution for their problem. These people know they are looking for specific help. This is a warmer audience. Once they are part of your email list, they have become part of your world and you can continue offer information so they can get to know you better.
Bottom - People at the bottom of your Sales Funnel are ready to buy your course, service or product. They know that you have what they want and they want to buy from you, you are the expert and they trust you to provide good information. This audience is warmed up and ready to purchase.

Step Four - Type of Pinterest Ad Campaign

Pinterest offers multiple types of Promoted Pin Campaigns. You can create a campaign that will focus on building awareness, driving traffic to your site or getting conversions. Since this blog is focussing on your first Pinterest Promoted Pin Campaign, we are going to discuss running Traffic Campaigns.

Traffic Campaigns focus on Pinterest showing your pin to an audience that you have targeted in your ad. Your goal in a traffic campaign is to get clicks to your website. You are charged by the click to your website. It doesn’t matter if they bought something or became a lead. But since your goal is to get them to your website to meet you and learn from you, if they clicked, you have succeeded!

Step Five - How to Set up a Pinterest Traffic Campaign

Follow along here as I take you through the steps of setting up a Promoted Pins Traffic Campaign.

Create Ad

Under Ads on your account menu, select Create Ad.

What’s your business Goal?

Select the Type of Campaign. Select Traffic NOW CALLED CONSIDERATION (since that’s what we are talking about in the blog). After you have selected the type of campaign you will be asked to name the campaign and put a length of time the campaign will run. I suggest you give it at least 30 days

Add Interests

If your niche falls under one or more of the categories listed here, you can select the categories that apply. This will help Pinterest target the appropriate audience for your Ad. If you don’t connect with one of the interests listed here, that’s fine, leave it blank and move to the next step where you will be able to add keywords for your audience and interests.

Keywords

In this section you are going to choose relevant keywords for your Ad. By adding keywords to the list, you are helping Pinterest show your Pin to a larger audience and target the appropriate people. It helps you increase the impressions for your pin and then ultimately the number of clicks you will receive. Add your keywords to the search bar on the right and Pinterest will show you relevant keywords and keyword phrases and how often they are searched for. Click and add the words that work for your Ad to the list on the left. I recommend at least 100 words or phrases! You can also add your own words.

Demographic Info

Fill out the demographic data for the individuals you would like to target with your Promoted Pin. If your niche is mostly followed by a specific age, gender or other demographic, fill that out here. Also, if you work only in certain locations, select those here too.

Budget & Schedule

Establish a budget for your campaign. You can indicate a daily or lifetime budget for the ad. You can also let Pinterest determine the cost per click or you can fill in an amount you would like to pay for clicks. This is something you can experiment with as you do more Promoted Pins. Pinterest ads can be relatively inexpensive.

Pins for Ad

Finally, select the pins you would like to promote! You can select one or several. Be mindful to select pins that are already performing well organically. You want to select eye catching, clickable pins that are full of your keywords. This will increase your chances of reaching your goal!

Step Six - Avoid Common Mistakes when Running Promoted Pin Campaigns

As you plan your Promoted Pin Ad Campaign, be careful to avoid these mistakes that I see quite often.

Make sure you understand you Sales Funnel and where your targeted customer is their journey to get to know you. Hop up a few paragraphs in this blog and as you read, think about which part of your funnel you want to target. Understanding your Sales Funnel will ensure you target your audience correctly.
Set realistic goals. As you build your ad campaign, set goals for your desired outcome. It is important that you understand what success looks like for your campaign. Is there a number of visitors or clicks you are hoping for? Are you trying to grow your email list by a certain number. Outlining your goals ahead of time will help you measure how your ad is performing.
Not leaving your ad active long enough. Remember, Pinterest takes time to work well for you. It is worth the wait, so be patient. I recommend you don’t make any changes for at least 7-10 days. Give Pinterest time. Sometimes it can take up to 30 days to really get an ad moving for you. Remember also, for a traffic campaign you are only paying for clicks, so while your audience is building through targeting, you don’t pay until they start clicking.
Not having a clear Call to Action once someone gets to your site. So, you got someone to click and they are there! Make sure it is clear to them what you want them to do or see. If it’s a blog post, make sure they land on that exact blog post. If it’s an opt in, make sure it’s easy for them to sign up. Make sure a pop up doesn’t jump right up and cover the item they came to see. Having a pleasant viewing experience keeps your customers on your site!

Step Seven - Conclusion

Pinterest Promoted Pin Campaigns are a great way to grow your business and traffic to your website by reaching new people and targeting (or perhaps retargeting) someone who is searching Pinterest for something you can help them with. Following the tips offered here will help you get started with your first Traffic Promoted Pin Campaigns. Please send questions if you have them! Happy Pinning.

Cathy Heflin